


Nerves

by jmandrake



Category: Phineas and Ferb
Genre: Body Horror, M/M, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Twisted and Fluffy Feelings, selfcest
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-04-09
Updated: 2014-04-09
Packaged: 2018-01-18 17:50:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 971
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1437298
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jmandrake/pseuds/jmandrake
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After the second dimension's regime topples, Perry remains to try to piece the OWCA and his cyborg counterpart back together.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Nerves

**Author's Note:**

> There's just so much to explore in the psychology of the second dimension, and one of the heartbreaking things is imagining how 2D!Perry could possibly recover from what he's experienced. His self-loathing combined with the admiration he has for Perry . . . just! It's so much.

It isn’t enough, you think, to be able to feel the sun on your face again.

The day you are finally allowed out of the medical ward, after the last scraps of silicon have been scraped off your nerve endings, the doctors tell you it  _will_ be.  _Won’t it be wonderful_ , they say, _to feel the sun again?_  You don’t bother explaining that you’ve felt the sun plenty during the last seven years; you were just never really allowed to have an opinion about it.

Where your recovery is concerned, you aren’t allowed much of an opinion either. They wheel you outside with a blanket draped over your creaking knees, and they wait for you to cry or laugh, show the living man beneath all that cold machinery _._ In this way you might prove your gratitude, weep for what you’ve lost, what you’ve been made to do. Shed a few tears, and people will not question your loyalty. They will be less eager to remember war crimes and the part you played in them.

No one says this to you directly, but the doctors lose their hopeful smiles when you do not shout or sob. Out in the sun, you only wonder if you’ll burn quicker, with that flat metal collar glinting white-hot against your skin. It absolutely cannot be removed, not if you want to keep your shoulders attached to your spine. So, recovery: but never a full one. You’ll always see your reflection through one goggled eye, and your hands will whir whenever you move them. And so you can’t quite bring yourself to care about the sun, or how you are supposed to feel about it.

\---

Over the next few weeks, the team of doctors drifts away, leaving only the engineer, Dr. Baljeet, behind. He is nine years old, and committed to restoring full power to your motor functions, a tricky procedure now that most of your synapses have to be rerouted through your real nervous tissue. When he smiles, he reminds you of your boys, but the rest of the time his gaze is set, hard and grim, as he threads wires back through your veins.

“He really did a number on you,” he says, and the honesty is refreshing, after everyone else’s wearying optimism. “And this mechanism is a technical marvel.” The next sentence is a whisper, reverent. “He was really brilliant, no doubt about it.”

You start to agree— _he was, and you don’t know the half of it_ —but your voice catches. It’s one thing for a leader of the rebellion to praise a former dictator. It’s quite another for  _you_  to say it, when that dictator’s wiring is the only thing still holding you together.

The OWCA has, miraculously, re-formed, though right now it’s little more than a careful, wounded thing shuffling out of the mud. It might never have found itself again without Carl Karl, who bravely hid himself inside a small air vent during Doofenshmirtz’s last raid. While the rest of the agents scrambled for weapons, Carl stayed safe, watching as the Normbots cut down anyone who resisted. But none of that matters, he says. It’s just a lucky thing he’s here now.   

Dr. Baljeet accompanies you to the OWCA debriefing session later. He props you up in a corner and tells you that it’s actually an award ceremony.  _For who?_  you say.  _For the other Perry_ , he says, grinning.

 _Oh._ A flicker of a memory is still lodged in your skull. Someone with your own face kneeling over you as 10,000 volts prickle down your spine. You remember tasting blood in your mouth, and you remember his chilly smile.

He’s come back to your dimension for a while, partly for this ceremony. He insists on calling it a debriefing and refuses to accept anything beyond a hearty shoulder pat. He stands at the front of the room, hands folded behind him, shirt clean and pressed. His eyes scan the crowd, and for a second, they land on you. You can’t read his expression.

“What was it like?” The questions begin. “What was it like to face both of your nemeses at once?”

“I was only fighting one,” he says, voice a strained whisper, “and he wasn’t anyone I knew.”

“But you  _did_  know him, back in your dimension. You knew his weaknesses, his personality…”

He shakes his head. “It wasn’t the same. It wasn’t  _close_.”

“Was this one an easier fight, then?”

“No, my—” He stops, clears his throat. “The Heinz Doofenshmirtz in our adjacent dimension has been assessed as a low-grade threat. Certainly his capacity for invention is roughly the same, and he is fully intent on conquering the Tri-State Area, but the …” He pauses again, pulls nervously on his tie. “… the conviction I perceived in the former emperor never manifested in him. Anyone in this room likely had a better understanding of this Doofenshmirtz than I ever did. Believe me, if there was anything I could have done to appeal to his …  _better_  instincts, I would have, but he consistently displayed a ruthlessness I had not before encountered.”

“How long did it take you to realize this dimension’s Doofenshmirtz was different?”

“I knew it immediately.”

His eyes skirt towards you, and while the other agents marvel over his keen skills of observation, you see his breath hitch, his fingers twitch as they reach for a hand that isn’t there. Another moment, and he’s still again; a breath in and out, awaiting further orders. It settles over you like a blanket, certain, almost comforting.  _He loves him_. He can talk about threat assessments and quick profiling all he likes, but that never had anything to do with it. He loves his nemesis, and he couldn’t love yours. 

You wish he’d let you know exactly what the difference was.  


End file.
